Drew Emborsky, the Crochet Dude, has his own line of crochet designs with Leisure Art, crochet hooks and yarns.

Drew Emborsky, the Crochet Dude, is one of those warm, lovable guys who makes you feel good when you talk to him, and I got to talk to him first thing in the morning on Friday, which set my whole day up on the right foot.

He explained that he is one of eight children and that his father, an ex-Marine, and all his brothers and sisters crocheted when he was growing up, so it just comes naturally to him. He also knits. But he trained in school to be a professional artist, and it was only after he’d painted professionally for years that he discovered he could actually make a living with crochet. He said his crochet career started when he began blogging about his crochet and called himself “the Crochet Dude.” From the blog, where he talked about some of his designs, he got invitations to design for various publications. And then the light dawned and he realized he could actually do this for a living. After that, there was no turning back.

I really admire Drew’s flair for marketing. He publishes his own designs with Leisure Arts now.

“They have the same consumer base as I do, so it’s a good fit for me,” Drew said.

But he hasn’t stopped with just designing. he’s launched his own line of ergonomic crochet hooks and darning needles for sewing in the ends of yarn joins with Boye. His tools have his Crochet Dude logo on them, so he makes sure they’re made to his exacting standards. After our talk, I ran into a marketing person from Simplicity, the owner of the Boye brand, and she gave me some of his darning needles and crochet hooks to try out. The quality is certainly there, and I hear they sell very well.

Of course, that was after years of thinking about it and perfecting the concept.

“I like the creative opportunity of doing it myself,” Drew said.

He explained that if he launched his own line within a larger company, he would be meeting with a committee that would have the power to modify his ideas about colors and yarn weights and fibers. By doing this himself, he was able to bring this vision, which he has been developing and cherishing for years, into fruition.

Drew’s yarn brand is called “Decades,” and he launched it with colors that represent the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and the 80s. He researched each decade for its tell-tale colors, then updated them so they’d be fresh and current and named them with names that are reminiscent of that period. For example, the pink from the 1950s is called “Panties Raid” and the green from the 1980s is called “Corporate Takeover.” I myself bought 2 skeins of 1950s TV dinner, a jade green color that reminds me of the turquoise 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon that my best friend’s family had.

Drew’s yarn is made of 100 percent Extra Fine Super Wash Merino from Peru, but it is hand-dyed here in the US. Drew and his dye company chose the 5 marled colors for each decade the week after Labor Day and then created a multi for each decade that is made of the same 5 colors. This allows for great designs. For Stitches East, all the yarn was worsted weight, but Drew hopes to add a cotton blend yarn and a sport weight to both the wool and cotton blend yarns very soon. The current wool yarn comes in 125-yard hanks of about 2 oz.

I challenged Drew about choosing a company that would hand-dye his yarns, and I could tell he’s done his homework because he explained that the hand-dyed yarns can actually be matched more closely than machine-dyed yarns, at least on the scale he’s working with. He said that his dyer has one set of all the colors he’d chosen, and she will make sure that all future dye lots match that “Golden Set” as closely as possible. He couldn’t get this kind of color control from machines, he said.

Then we got to talking about designs. Drew has created both knitting and crochet designs for his yarn. In the days leading up to Stitches East, he was posting teasers to some of these designs on Facebook. One of them was a close-up of his knitted tunic, Tahoe, which uses one of the monochrome yarns for the main body and one of the multicolored yarns for the trim, sleeve cuffs and belt. It’s done in the mistaken rib stitch, the same one that Audrey Knight uses in the first 6 scarves in “Reversible Scarves.” The advantage of this stitch is that it’s very flexible, so that you can knit a fairly simple tube with it and it will custom-fit itself to your body.

Drew is a big advocate of self-fitting designs like this. “My designs aren’t overly complicated, but they’re beautiful,” he said. He added that he doesn’t want people to be intimidated by his designs.

“I have about 23,000 Facebook fans, and I listen to what they’re saying, what their expectations are for patterns. And I watch the trends,” he said.

If you were at Vogue Knitting Live in New York last January, you might have caught Drew’s fashion show, which was call something like “It’s Only a Rectangle.” I myself enjoyed it very much. But I challenged him by saying, “You know, I saw that show, and the designs were really nice, but the model was very thin. I look around Stitches East, and I see a lot of older women like myself who would rather knit or crochet than exercise, and we’re all heavier. We shouldn’t be wearing tube tops. What about people like us? Are you going to design stuff for us, too?”

Drew said he’s very aware of this and that he’s already taken some classes about designing for larger women. He said that the book publishers are very conscious of what their competition is doing, and it seems that every year when he suggests a book of big-girl designs, his publisher says, no, someone else did that this year. For example, this year, it was Mary Beth Temple’s “Curvy Girl Crochet.” But he is giving this need his attention and hopes to have his own book of designs for large women before too long.

In Drew’s defense, the Tahoe design does go to a bust measurement of 52 (with negative ease). He’s trying.

Drew also said his patterns focus on the yarn. He likes to design purses because they’re very structural, and his clothing designs are also structural. He likes Tunisian crochet and even broomstick lace, partly because he likes bringing all these techniques into his work and partly for the structure they create.

As I mentioned before, Drew, Ben Levisay (CEO of XRX) and Mark Moraca (coowner of Kollage Yarns) volunteered to be part of a contest to raise money for Halos of Hope. Fans were able to vote whether to shave the head or save the head of their favorite guy for $10, and you could vote to shave all three for $20. You know that they all got more shave votes than save votes, and all 3 of them got their heads shaved on Saturday at Stitches East. My photo of Drew was taken the day before the saving.

You can find lots of photos of the shaved men on the Halos of Hope Facebook page. They look hot, but they also look a bit like bouncers from a local bar. Their fundraiser raised $19,000 for Halos of Hope, though. That money will be used for things like shipping chemo caps to patients all over the country.

About Pam MacKenzie

Pam MacKenzie grew up in a real estate family. Her parents were real estate brokers and office managers, and she herself was a licensed agent in the 1970s. But early on, Pam discovered she'd much rather write about the industry than sell. Now in her eighth year as the real estate editor at the Courier News, Pam believes she has the best job at the paper. In this blog, she's on a mission to empower readers to give them a strong understanding of anything and everything that can impact their ability to own a home. And she believes passionately that when you understand the real estate industry in New Jersey, you understand so much more: the education system, economic and racial bias, the way politics works or doesn't work and ecology, to name a few. She invites everybody to leave lots of comments, even when they disagree with her.

About this Blog

Pam explores local knitting groups and yarn shops, critiques patterns and shares her wisdom on techniques for improving your craft.

About the author

Pam MacKenzie
Our real estate editor, Pam MacKenzie, expresses her creative side in this blog about knitting. Pam learned to knit at age 6, when her friend’s mother made Pam’s doll a dress, and Pam wanted to make more. Her mother wanted her to learn how to sew in high school, but she was afraid of the sewing machines, cutting fabric the wrong way, and the potential that sewing would have for bringing down her grade-point average. Every year, she managed to find a course conflict to avoid sewing classes. But the day after high school graduation, she took her graduation money to a fabric store, bought a kit to make a sweater, taught herself to read patterns and never looked back. These days, she knits a prayer shawl every month, along with sweaters, tote bags, gift bags and other goodies. She also designs many of her projects. Read More About PamE-mail Pam